Clinically blind to airports
I'm about 40 hours into my PPL training. Because I was out of the country for a bit -- but still did a little flying -- my instructor wanted to do some dual time instead of more solos. We did steep turns and stalls, both of which I did pretty well. I can still make them more perfect, but good. After all the winding around, he wanted me to fly to a nearby airport for some takeoffs and landings. I've flown to this airport several times before, including solo. I had the Garmin GPS in the plane, ForeFlight, and my eyes. And yet, I was basically on top of the airport before I saw the strip. He had to point it out before I completely blew my entry into the downwind.
I'm in Central PA, so a lot of farms. The farms kind of bleed into the next.. these aren't huge runways, so I'm trying to look for hangars... but hangars sometimes look like the many warehouses in the area.
Any tricks? Should I make it a point to overfly? I just worry about after I get my cert, and I'm trying to figure this out on my own.